Grant: Planning Grants - Priority Announcement: Infection and Immunity

Funding is requested for the symposium, "Balancing Immunity and Inflammation at Mucosal sites," to be presented at the 23rd annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Immunology (CSI) to be held at Niagara Falls, Ontario. This research area has important implications for many diseases, from infection to autoimmunity as well as having important implications for vaccination. This major symposium will be cochaired by Colby Zaph of UBC and Dana Philpott, of the University of Toronto. The major symposium will be complemented by a Keynote address on the Inflammasome, by Jurg Tschopp, University of Lausanne as well as by 2 other major symposia, 4 workshops and 2 poster sessions. The CSI annual meeting has a long-standing tradition of bringing together trainees and faculty in the Immunology community with internationally recognized keynote and symposium speakers. Besides the exciting and top quality scientific presentations, the meeting, which will attract about 300 people, is an excellent venue for trainees to present their research findings. It is also a place where students, postdoctoral fellows, new investigators and their established colleagues can network and raise their profile nationally. The meeting is small enough to allow interaction and indeed the Keynote and symposium speakers are asked to attend the whole meeting to allow them to interact with attendees. The meeting takes place entirely in one venue, with meals and coffee breaks held in the same area, so that there is a lot of opportunity for networking during the meeting. Another way we encourage trainees is that we offer a series of travel awards for students and fellows, as well as poster prizes for graduate students. The poster prizes ensure that all grad students have their posters viewed by Faculty judges. We also make it a point to involve young investigators in poster judging or as workshop chairs, to increase their profile and expose them to the Canadian Immunology community.